


Denial

by Fleshwerks



Series: Colossus come down [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, copious amounts of petulant angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 05:32:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8832334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleshwerks/pseuds/Fleshwerks
Summary: The Inquisition is disbanded, the Inquisitor is grieving.





	

Mounting Abyssal was yet another small but stark reminder how much had changed - he didn’t quite understand, which part of the saddle to grab anymore, and Abyssal was a tall mare, though it stood patiently as her rider struggled to climb on his back. Abyssal was aging, and had carried Spiridon Lavellan since he was a child, when mother had not yet died. Once settled, feet in stirrups, bridles gathered loosely in one hand, they waited in the somber, grey and dim dawn as the rest of their small convoy tucked the last of the supplies in wagons and mounted up. It smelled like rain, the air was heavy, and Abyssal lowered her massive head, lazily pulling up the weeds that grew between the coloured tiles of the road that led away from the Winter Palace and the wretched Halamshiral. Flames, they were slow, fucking around bidding long-winded farewells to those who would’ve devoured the Inquisition alive mere days ago. He wanted the arches of the palace gone from his sight, for each of them looked like a dormant doorway to the dreaded flux, and the creatures inside wanted him dead.  
  
By the time the entourage pulled from the stables, it was raining. The healers had insisted he take the carriage and let his battered, mutilated body heal instead of riding horseback. Spiridon had insisted they go fuck themselves and their carriage with its goosefeather bed and perfumed air. And he was sick of the food. Sick of those hideous cakes and fine meals that were more fit to decorate than to be eaten. He wanted bare walls and a hard bed, a simple meal and time alone with himself, and each day as the foothills grew closer and the air began to smell of sea, he lagged behind more, letting Abyssal follow the others in her heavy, slow gait. Enjoying the journey, delaying arrivals for as long as he could. Being on the road brought a semblance of peace with the rains, the tending to the horses and their gear, but inside four garish walls of the rooms in the manses of the lesser nobles hosting them as the party rested, the whispers closed in. Voices of the long dead from the well. And once they started taking, they wouldn’t shut up.  
  
So he kicked off of his bed when the shadows of opulent furniture in the gilded bedroom given to him grew too tall and deep in the moonlight. Spiridon had never liked the dark, but now more than ever did he fear what his mind’s eye saw when the waking world slipped away.   
With a bit of a struggle he managed to get into his shirt and loose trousers that now bore buttons instead of laces for ease of use. Once dressed, he left the room.  
  
He was not familiar with the layout of the building, and in the dark he soon found himself lost in the hallways, walking into pedestals and walls with nothing but his hand stretched out to feel his way around. Frustrated, he shook his head let his hand drop to his side. A strip of weak light shone in the dark from what must’ve been a doorway. He stepped toward the door and gave it a light knock, but when no answer came, he opened the door.  
  
Josephine Montilyet sat on her wide bed, legs crossed under her with her scribbling kit in her lap, and letters spread around her in an uncharacteristically chaotic fashion.  
_Oh!_ She exclaimed when she saw who had entered her room. But the former Inquisitor had frozen in the hallway, eyes fixed on her body.  
  
_What are you wearing?_ He asked, incredulity colouring low and quiet voice. Josephine looked down.  
  
_They’re my night clothes!_ Josephine replied. The woman had shed her threads of gold and royal blue and had instead clad herself in white cotton with long bloomers so puffy and night shirt even puffier and frillier so that Spiridon couldn’t help but stare.  
  
_You look like…._ Spiridon began with a frown, but then shook his head and rolled his eyes. _Actually, can you help me out?_  
  
_Hm?_ Josephine said and put aside her quill and papers.  
  
_I needed to go out. But I can’t see shit in these hallways and I’ve no idea where I am or where the exit is. Show me outside?_ Spiridon asked. The candles lighting the Ambassador’s room burned in their wall-mounted sconces, save for a three-pronged candelabrum on her night desk where beeswax candles were little more than stubs.  
  
_Is something wrong, Inquisitor?_ Josephine asked and threw her legs over the edge of her bed and hopped down.  
  
_Really wish you’d stop calling me that,_ Spiridon muttered.  
  
_I am… sorry,_ Josephine looked aside apologetically. _Force of habit, I’m afraid._ __  
__  
_Mm. And that’s why I want to get out of this house. I never could stand sleeping in buildings like these. Ceilings too high but floors and walls cluttered with furniture made for people smaller and far wealthier than me. But,_ he smiled weakly, _I don’t have to worry about offending delicate Orlesian sensibilities anymore, now do I._ __  
__  
_Well,_ Josephine said, _I still do._ She put on a pair of slippers and a robe that fell off her ruffles so that she reminded him of a walking tent. _You can sleep in the stables if you like, but like my beds warm, clean, and covered with down pillows,_ she said sharply, though there was no malice in her voice. The ever-polite Ambassador had, in the beginning of her tenure as the Ambassador of the Inquisition, learned quickly that the Herald spoke but two languages: Expletive and Sardonic, and that he seldom responds to any other.  
_Follow me._ She took the candelabrum by its foot and motioned at the door.   
  
He was surprised by how close to the exit he had been. Just a turn left, down the stairs, then a straight shot through the foyer and he’d been out without disturbing anybody or having to find a way to dismiss Josephine without coming across as ungrateful and callous. This was a woman who had stopped wars, who’d fought away against two nations seeking to tear down the failing carcass of the Inquisition, and the first and only who’d set hold down the fort when the master of the house was out cold or plain incoherent from all the sedatives and pain concoctions that were being poured down his throat following the disaster at the Crossroads.  
Now out of bed in her tent of a robe and fluffy bloomers and fluffier nightshirt, guiding a blind and broken man through the gilded halls. He really ought to be thankful. He ought to have asked her to sit with him on the wide marble stairs in the light, warm rain, and allay her fears and get her away from the inkpot and the quill.   
  
Instead, Josephine Montilyet herself took the initiative. She placed the candelabrum down and sat next to it, back against the stone wall, tucking her knees under her chin. The rain hit the burning wicks, hissing when it evaporated in the flickering heat. Spiridon shuffled his feet. He wanted to see the stables. The horses were taken from the riders so swiftly by polite stable boys. Even now servant folk insisted on doing things for him that they did to the nobility and their equally noble guests when all he wanted to do was to untack his mount, groom her, feed her, just to regain some sense of normalcy. Like nothing had happened at all.  
  
_You’re not looking at it,_ Josephine said when Spiridon sat down, away from Josephine, but still facing her and her lights.   
  
_You’re not leaning on it, you know it’s not there. But you’re not looking at it,_ she said, and wrapped her nightrobe tighter around her. Though it rained, it was not cold. For the season, the night was unusually warm, smelling like the first notes of approaching summer.  
  
_Don’t you want to go back inside?_ Spiridon asked snidely. This is exactly why he’d avoided the rest of his retinue, lagging behind or riding far in front. Everyone was waiting, looking at him for a reaction, response. He knew they discussed it among themselves. Some had tried to approach him with concern. Intrigants, he’d surmised, because everyone loved gossip, and _pity the poor Inquisitor_ was a topic ripe and succulent for discussing. It was something that united humans and elves, he figured, and dwarves and qunari too. Strike them when they’re down. Only fair, he supposed, because honor and compassion have no place in a game of high stakes. He wondered if the Dread Wolf entertained the same thoughts. He’d played this game since times ancient. Fuck that guy.  
  
He inhaled as if about to say something, but whichever words he was about to hurl at Josephine, they remained stuck in his chest.   
_Let me have this one delusion, Joe,_ he finally said, defeated. _I have my whole life ahead to live with knowing that what I was is gone, and what is left is anchored to someone else’s will._  
  
Josephine leaned her chin on her knees.  
  
_It’s unusual to see you give in, Inquisitor,_ Josephine replied, eyeing the flames. _In fact, it is quite unprecedented._  
  
_I think my self-pity is long overdue,_ Spiridon snapped back. There had been times when he’d walked the edge of the knife, and this little woman with iron will had wrangled him back to the side of safety, dragged him kicking and screaming. But she didn’t know. She did not know what awaited the waking world in just a few short years. Vivienne de Fer did, and she’d rushed to round up the loyalists and rally any college of magi that would still hold her word in esteem. The Iron Bull had broken a horn when the anchor had exploded and knocked them all back. He’d sawed off the other and disappeared with a promise to dispatch the vashoth operating secretly within the qun. Dalish and Skinner had disappeared too, though Bull had seemed confident when he announced their supposed defection from the Chargers. Varric knew, but he had closed his eyes and sighed. There comes a point where a man can no longer fight, he had said.  
  
Cassandra knew, and Divine Victoria knew, and no one else, for it seemed cruel to take away from tired fighters a momentary respite and sow chaos when no plans of action had yet been laid out.  
  
Josephine inhaled deeply and stretched her legs out on the wet marble.   
  
_What are you planning to do once you’re back in Skyhold?_ She asked.   
  
_Raze it,_ Spiridon replied simply. _We can’t feed our standing army. After the assembly, I can’t even imagine what the desertion rates are. The Bannorn will no longer feed us, and our coffers are empty. We cannot fund the relief efforts, in fact, there’s no ‘we’ anymore. That ugly castle on that cold rock was always a logistic nightmare. I can’t believe there were people once who looked at a desolate mountain top and thought: yeah, this is a great place to build a stronghold. All the sieging armies need is a four months before everyone inside starves or freezes to death._ __  
__  
Spiridon remembered complaining about the unfortunate location of Skyhold once before when the refugees had arrived from Haven, during the three months of starvation and cold when the new Inquisition had waited for spring to melt the snowed-in mountain passes, and even then it had took manpower and many deaths to dig old supply routes out from under centuries of packed snow, but Josephine had curbed his vocal complaints: we are all hungry, but people’s morale is as high as their leader’s, and if the Inquisitor has doubts, then what hope was there for his people?  
  
_Razing it seems a little excessive, don’t you think?_ Josephine said, voice as sweet and spicy as it always was, but now notes of nervousness bled through. For all her savvy, even she balked at the idea of an absolute end.  
  
_Does it?_ He said, and leaned his head back, closing his eyes, enjoying the light, warm rain on his face. _Would you build your house on a gravesite?_ He asked. _Dig your well past the bones of the long-dead and wonder why the water’s poisoned?_ __  
__  
Josephine sighed and picked at her fingernail.   
  
_Ah, master Lavellan. Still with the hyperboles,_ she said, but it lacked the sting that usually came with jabs like this.  
  
_There were so many Eluvians in the Crossroads, and the roads to them were littered with bones,_ Spiridon said wearily, keeping his eyes closed, reliving the desecration of the mass grave that the Crossroads and the _Vir Dirthara_ had become. _I couldn’t take a step without a bone crunching under my boot, and the closer I got to each pathway, the more they were. Hundreds. Thousands, and that was just Vir Dirthara. Who knows how wide the Crossroads really span? And how many more skeletons are huddled up around each dead mirror?_ Spiridon chuckled and shook his head, then wiped the rain out of his eyes. _And dear Tarasyl’an tel’as is the wellspring. The place where sky was held back._ He sighed.  
  
_There’s poison in those walls, Joe, and we never knew._ __  
__  
Josephine had gone completely motionless, and was now staring intently at the former Inquisitor.  
  
_What happened in the Crossroads? What poison runs in the walls of Skyhold?_ She asked. __  
_  
__Just me being a bitter big boy about my toys of war being taken from me._ He resented himself for letting his mouth run. The world was not yet ready. __He was not yet ready, and to herald another end when the scar from the last one still flickered in the sky was cruel in a way only a God can be.

**Author's Note:**

> Just let it out you great white idiot. let it all out. Not all of the chapters will be linear. There will be time jumps.


End file.
